Literary Arts
Literary Arts Community
Literary Arts at Brown is the hub of a vibrant, campus-wide literary community with an active slate of readings, plays, festivals and performances that gives student writers unique exposure to important voices in contemporary literature.
Literary Arts Community
Literary Arts at Brown is the hub of a vibrant, campus-wide literary community with an active slate of readings, plays, festivals and performances that gives student writers unique exposure to important voices in contemporary literature.
Affiliated publications
Brown is an active site for literary activity, serving as home to the African Poetry Book Fund and Callaloo.
The African Poetry Book Fund promotes and advances the development and publication of the poetic arts through its book series, contests, workshops, and seminars and through its collaborations with publishers, festivals, booking agents, colleges, universities, conferences and all other entities that share an interest in the poetic arts of Africa.
Callaloo publishes original work by and about writers and visual artists of African descent worldwide. Callaloo offers an engaging mixture of fiction, poetry, critical articles, interviews, drama, and visual art. Frequently annotated bibliographies, special issues dedicated to prominent writers and literary, social, and cultural themes, and full-color, original artwork and photography are some features of this highly acclaimed international showcase of arts and letters.
Readings
Each year, the Department sponsors between twenty and forty on-campus readings by distinguished and experimental writers. Recent readers have included Ben Lerner, Jamaica Kincaid, Marlon James, Wole Soyinka, Michael Ondaatje, Susan Howe, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, John Banville, John Kinsella, Kamau Brathwaite, Shahrnush Parsipur, and Marjorie Welish. Graduate students contribute their voices as well, through our MFA Presentation Series. In addition, Brown boasts a thriving literary scene that extends beyond the Literary Arts Program. The President’s Lecture Series, Nonfiction Writing Program, Brown Bookstore, Student Lecture Committee and Library Forum each bring many renowned writers to campus.
Writers-in-Residence
The Literary Arts MFA Program has an active residency program that brings compelling writers to campus for week-long stays. Resident writers read the work of graduate students and meet with them in informal conferences, giving useful new perspectives on works-in-progress. Past residents at Brown have included Charles Bernstein, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Nilo Cruz, Norma Cole, Maria Irene Fornes, Jorie Graham, David Foster Wallace, and many others. In spring 2025, Leslie Nnekah Arimah and Cindy Juyoung Ok visited through this program.
Learn More about the Literary Arts Community
Alumni of Brown’s Undergraduate and Graduate Programs in Literary Arts go on to have active careers as fiction writers, as poets, as playwrights, as artists of literary hypermedia, and as university teachers of creative writing, composition and literature.
Literary Arts is pleased to offer the following prizes. Entry for these prizes takes place annually in the spring semester.